Carrol Cox wrote:
> ravi wrote:
>>
>>perhaps, but i like the original version (pascal?) since it brings out
>>the incompleteness of knowledge arrived at through reasoning alone (and
>>thats not just incompleteness in a mathematical sense, but even
>>incompleteness in the sense of certainty required to act).
>
> From my own reading in contemporary neuroscience, I would say that there
> is no such thing as "reasoning alone." Separate parts of the brain are
> in action, but they cannot operate without each other. Hence neither the
> heart nor the reason has reasons of its own. Without the intervention of
> "reason" the heart cannot have its own reasons, and without the action
> of the heart, reason cannot reason.
>
well, my viewpoint is materialistic and mechanistic (what that means at
the quantum level i do not know), so yes, i would say that the process
of reaching a conclusion (with or without some inputs) is arrived at
through some mechanical/electro-chemical processes involving the
interaction of elements of the body with each other and the body with
the external environment.
my hint to what i mean by "reason alone" above is in my mention of the
notion of incompleteness. what i mean by "reason alone" is a sequence of
atomic logical inferences (which i would guess is the sort of definition
that a logical positivist or an aynd rand type would find agreeable)
that can be carried out in a mechanical device such as a computer or a
human being. one could, arguably, carry out this sterile process within
one's mind, rejecting any other impulses or intuitions (or what have
you) -- the ensuing conclusion can then be claimed to be arrived at
using 'reason alone' or perhaps 'objective reasoning'.
[as a leftist, i am not against such a process or basing debate on some
form of such a process. i do believe appeal to such is essential to
break various vicious cycles prevalent in current debate]. the question
is, while it is true that this mechanical process will never lead us to
all truths, will some slightly modified version of it lead us to the
necessary truths to base one's actions on? (for example: while the
standard deductive process, or in particular the first order theory of
arithmetic, might not be complete, mathematicians have not had to step
outside the process to derive important results).
i read pascal's (thanks for the confirmation jks) statement as a 'no'
answer to the above question. the point may be that all conclusions are
underdetermined (should i add, in the real world as opposed to the world
of mathematical entities), or a simpler pragmatic one that problems of
complexity would impact the utility of 'reason alone'. the complexity
problem perhaps might be solved in some quantum computing sense (and i
leave it to ian to understand that stuff ;-)) or by nature, through a
process of parallel computation that encodes shortcut algorithms or
steps into the surviving device.
--ravi
p.s: to complete my point regarding the use of 'reason' to settle
debates, given that i see no way around it, the fact that the results
cannot be taken as conclusive, impels me to heed feyerabend's advice to
act with tolerance, and to work with the people rather than from above them.
